


It's a new time

by Yuletide (Zebra)



Category: Tron (1982)
Genre: Gen, not Legacy compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 13:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zebra/pseuds/Yuletide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse at the system after the MCP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a new time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kharasma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kharasma/gifts).



They had defeated the MCP. The IO towers had lit up again, but large parts of the digital domain lay still in darkness, and many programs wandered aimlessly around without the dictatorial guidance of the MCP or input from their Users.

Tron wondered whether they’d see Flynn again. There were so many things he wanted to ask about Users. He had expected Flynn to contact them somehow, to let them know his status.   
So far no such message had come in, although in a way maybe the contact with Alan-1 was a sign.

Unlike other programs, Tron’s User was in near constant contact with him. Updates, code expansions, and requests for status reports left him with just enough time to fulfill the tasks Alan-1 had set out for him.   
His first task had been a system-wide check for any viruses or other nasty surprises the MCP had left behind. So far ENCOM was clear, but the MCP had interfaced with and subjugated other systems, too. Systems that had to be disconnected from ENCOM, systems Tron itched to make sure were safe. But Alan-1 had expressly forbidden him from any contact beyond those required to maintain ENCOM’s firewall, and while the changes to his code indicated that he wouldn’t be always responsible solely for ENCOM, that’s where his priority lay for the time being. 

His number one priority right now was the parts of the system required to work the digitizing laser. The problems with it were the main reason he had worried something had happened to Flynn, and Yori’s contact to Lora-1 had not contradicted that assumption. Her User was back to tinkering with Yori’s code and requesting detailed reports on the digitizing process. The final out-of-beta release still outstanding. 

Although Yori couldn’t currently do any digitizing, the other reason Tron had been worried about Flynn. Just as Flynn had left the digital domain, the whole area had crashed and tumbled into chaos, the IO tower spewing only illegible garbage till it had been removed from the system. 

“Here, have some energy. I wouldn’t want you to derez. Though your User seems to think you can run without any down time. How many upgrades has it been?”   
Yori sat down and leaned against him.

“It’s my duty. Alan-1 only does what needs to be done.”

He put his arm around her and together they looked at the hole in the system where the IO had been. One moment it had given confusing commands, the next it was gone, only a ghost remaining in some registry files. Other broken parts of the digitizing laser had vanished, some without warning. Many had later returned, and it had become Tron’s job to integrate them into the system, managing the access of new programs, mediating contact with the old ones, keeping everybody away from interfaces gone haywire and giving programs stack overflows.

“The IO tower will come back; some of our new programs brought the drivers to install it later. And then you can get back to digitizing all these weird things from the user world.”

She slapped his knee, but there was laughter in her reply.   
“They are not weird things, they're complex mathematical structures. Even Flynn.”

Keeping hold of Yori, he let himself sink backwards till they lay flat, looking at the flickering datalines up above.

“I agree; he wasn’t a thing.”   
Which earned him another slap. Yori, usually calm and stable, was absolutely antsy lately. He could feel her twitching against him, and he told her as much.

“You’d be twitching, too, if your User kept you giving upgrade after upgrade and then had you doing nothing but recompiling that code with minute name changes to variable declarations and an extra empty line inserted here or there. At least your User lets you try them out in between. I’m stuck in simulation mode.” 

“Your time will come. We have to trust our Users. They haven’t let us down before.”

He squeezed her hand. The cycles since the end of the MCP had been better, but not like before the MCP’s take over.

“I’m wondering if Lora-1 is a bored as I am. She never bothered before with empty lines to separate the integers from the floats. I’m half expecting her to take them out the next time, or insert comment for her comments. I shouldn’t complain, though. It’s better than being nothing more than an inconsequential subroutine under the MCP, and the six different new algorithms to store large amounts of digitizing data have to mean something, don’t they?”

“Oh, they do.” 

Hearing that voice they scrambled to their feet.

“Ram!”   
Tron was happy to see his fellow game warrior hale and compiled. He clapped him on the shoulder and drew Yori closer with the other hand.   
“How have you been? Flynn said you had derezzed.”

“I don’t remember that. My last backup had me at the energy pool. I see you got the MCP down.”

Ram looked just like Tron remembered, although he too had that certain gleam you only saw in programs that had suffered under the MCP and now valued their freedom. The new programs moaned about all the protocols they had to follow to get access to the systems they wanted and about being denied when permissions weren’t there. 

Which was why Tron wondered what Ram was doing here and how he'd gotten in; he not only had no tasks with the digitizing laser, he wasn’t even from the same system.

Tron’s security protocols took over, he pulled Yori behind him and fell into a much less relaxed stance. “What brings you here?” Ram must have remembered their times on the game grid, because he raised his hands and took a step back.

“Woah, time out. I’m supposed to be here. My code still got to finish compiling what my function will be, but I know I’m supposed to be here. I mean, imagine my surprise at waking up in ENCOM with the MCP gone. I was surprised you didn’t hunt me down the moment I came online again.”

Tron should have known the moment Ram came online; he had known about all the other programs, from the half-compiled backups running on out–of-date libraries in HR, to the new Hello World from PR, to the very big and apparently snobby one forcing its way in among the digitizing sub-system hot on the heels of the new shining IO tower winking into existence in front of them.

It looked different from the old one. So far it was lifeless, but not the burnt-out husk the previous one had been; rather it carried the air of something new, something exciting just waiting to be filled with life.

Tron felt irrevocably pulled towards it. Yori and Ram seemed to feel the same, taking confused, hesitating steps towards the new tower.

“I have been an actuarial program all my life, but I know for sure that that’s my IO tower now. Talk about recompile.”

The MCP had forced programs to switch their functions completely, and those that hadn’t been able to fight it had been sent to the Game Grid to be either derezzed or finally broken. Tron had never seen a User recompile a program with a completely different function, though.

He’d have to ask Alan-1 about that, and he was sure Alan-1 would be the one answering when the new IO tower was functional. For just as Ram was sure this was now his tower, Tron knew that it was his task to make sure the new IO was secure and safe. Alan-1 had given him the security codes and licenses to implant in it so it could connect to the rest of the ENCOM system.

Yori walked ahead of them.   
“I can’t wait to speak to Lora-1. There are so many things I want to know. Flynn was so much like us; I never imagined Lora-1 could be like that.”

“Don’t get your hopes up too much; we don’t know yet if Flynn really was a User.”   
Although Tron hoped he was, and would ask Alan-1 the first chance he got.

“What else could he have been? You saw the things he could do. He interrupted the MCP and made it possible for us to defeat him.”

Ram drew both of them close by slinging his arms over their shoulders.

“So, I missed the grand finale. Tell me everything about how you and dour buddy Flynn defeated the big bad MCP.”

By the time they had reached the entrance to the IO tower, they had told Ram everything he had missed.

Before them the closed entrance loomed, glowing faintly in its powered-down state.

“Nothing to it; here goes everything.”   
Ram put his hand against the entrance, which flickered and pixeled out of existence.

“Let me go first.”   
Tron held Ram back; who might be the new master of the IO tower, but Tron was still responsible for security. And while they hadn’t had any problems with the other recent add-ons and replacements the Users had given them, Tron would do everything he could to make sure that no viruses or a second MCP got a hold in ENCOM’s system.

Slowly they made their way through the empty paths.   
There was nothing and nobody there. The only sounds were their steps and the hum of energy powering.   
Still, Tron felt like something was off. 

“Come on, Tron. Relax, everything’s fine. Let's do some talking to the Users.”   
Ram clapped him on the back and got to work establishing the connection. Yori winked at Tron before getting busy on another console.

Tron thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked, there was nothing but the reflection of the connection going up.

Maybe he was getting overstressed. All the updates, all the changes, all the tasks waiting. He hoped Alan-1 didn't want anything more than a status report now that the IO tower was operational.

“Woah, look at that -- we got something massive incoming.”

But Tron had no time to heed Ram’s call and look what Yori and Ram were doing, because this time he had definitely seen something.   
It was nearly undetectable, just a slight flicker where it wasn’t fast enough to appear completely in sync with its environment. 

Tron pretended to be engrossed in watching Ram and Yori working faster than he had ever seen any program at an IO connection. 

Whatever it was got sloppy, assured that it was still hidden.

Tron leaned against a wall, looking bored and scratching his back.

It sprang toward the connection.

Tron threw his disc.

A frail old program came crashing down and looked at him accusingly. Tron caught his disc.

Had he made a mistake and gotten an out-of-date IO driver that still lingered in the system and had just been waiting for an update?

But then its appearance fractured and it started to lose resolution, red lines crisscrossing over the blue circuits.

The virus fell into itself and deleted.

“Heh, greetings, programs. What was that thing?”

Tron whipped around.

Flynn stood there.   
Looking just like the last time Tron had seen him. But he wasn’t only one there. There were two more Users with him. Or where they just copies?

Copies of Yori and Tron himself?

“You weren't lying; this is incredible, Flynn.”   
Yori and the program looking like her reached out to each other, clearly fascinated and only having eyes for each other.

Tron looked at his own identical counterpart.   
The other him returned the favor.

Tron hoped his User, for he was sure that it had to be Alan-1, was satisfied by what he saw.

“Okay, programs and Users, that’s it. You can be all over each other later, first I wanna see how my system is faring now the big ole MCP is derezzed.”


End file.
